Just four of 25 cars in the field avoided wrecks during the exhibition race on Saturday

February 13, 2016

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Saturday’s Sprint Unlimited at Daytona International Speedway ended with a mere handful of cars undamaged -- and race winner Denny Hamlin’s Toyota wasn’t one of them.

But Hamlin got his wreck out of the way early in a two-car incident with Ricky Stenhouse Jr.’s Ford on lap 13 and won the race in overtime with a large swatch of silver tape on the right side of his No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota Camry.

Hamlin triumphed in the season-opening non-points event for the second time in three years (and third time overall) and gave JGR its fourth Sprint Unlimited victory in the last five years.

Under NASCAR’s new overtime rules, which require the leader to reach an overtime line on the backstretch under green on the restart lap before the race is official, the event ended under caution for a six-car wreck in turn one.

The overtime extended the race four laps past its scheduled distance, and, by then, Hamlin had a comfortable lead -- if any lead on a superspeedway can be considered comfortable.

Joey Logano came home second, Paul Menard third and Kyle Larson fourth in a race that saw only four of the 25 cars avoid wrecks that collectively produced seven cautions for 25 laps